


We Think It's Love Love Love

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [77]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Play, Bathing/Washing, Clitblocking Nirupa, Cockblocking Sherlock, Cunnilingus, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Food Sex, Frottage, Kilts, Kissing, Nipple Licking, POV Female Character, Rimming, Romance, Sensual Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:34:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1379287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John and Mary first started dating, they got on like a house on fire from the start. Their respective best friends, however, needed a little adjustment time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is primarily from Mary's PoV and will include her and John's first kiss, and their first time.
> 
> It references the ends scenes from Collared, in which John makes it clear to Sherlock that Sherlock is an intrinsic part of his life, and anyone John dates will have to get that, and accept Sherlock as part of his life, or not bother.
> 
> The title is from Leah Haywood's We Think It's Love

John and Mary had their first proper date a week after they met at the Chingford Plains gig. They didn’t even get to properly kiss.

Sherlock showed up half way through dinner with an urgent summons to a crime scene. John glared at him until Sherlock was forced to show him the crime scene photograph Lestrade had just sent. The images of the unfortunate victim curbed John’s appetite in any case, and Mary was charmingly amused about the whole thing.

“It’s all right, John. Go off with Sherlock and save the world.” She kissed his cheek and they rescheduled.

Their next date, two days later, was simply a lunchtime walk in a park. That date had the special status of heralding their first kiss, under an oak tree.

They were walking through the gardens, talking about Mary’s experiences in the Middle East, comparing them to some of John’s anecdotes about being on leave (realising that they’d been in Cairo about a month apart one year, and had drunk mint tea at the same café in the _Khan el Khalili_ , but not in the same booth) and how they both preferred the generally good quality of the Cairene tea over the generally haphazard quality of the Cairene beer.

Along the way, they started holding hands. Mary brushed the edge of her pinkie against the edge of his, and as simple as that, their fingers entwined, palms together, warm and dry and as comfortable as if they’d known each other forever.

And they paused under the oak tree while Mary pointed out the pair of grey squirrels in the branches. John had looked up and leaned close in to better match her line of sight, and squeezed her hand – and then turned his head, slowly, his nose bumping against the corner of her mouth and her cheek, and he paused, and he breathed, warm and soft against her skin.

Mary angled her head towards him, seeking his mouth, and with this tacit permission, he did this thing – this incredibly adorable and yet sexy thing – where he nosed underneath her jaw, as though he was shorter than she, and followed the gesture with his a press of his lips, and while he took both her hands in both of his, he kiss-nuzzled his way to the side of her mouth. They were of a height, but Mary still had to tilt her chin down, just a fraction, to capture his mouth with hers, and John sort-of-sighed, happy-glad, and kissed her back, her fingers held gently between his. It was the least demanding and yet most sensuous first kiss she’d ever had.

When he drew away, she chased his mouth again and brought up one hand to lay against his cheek. This time he slipped an arm around her waist to hold her close.  He breathed against her cheek in between kisses, bumped his nose in tiny, sensuous gestures against her skin, until she guided his mouth back to hers, and sought his tongue with her own.

The kiss went on for a long time, not quite torrid but certainly not innocent. It was a kiss that said, _we can take our time; we can savour this. This is too important to rush, but when you are ready, I will be ready._

Arms still wrapped around each other, John and Mary finally drew a fraction away from each other and grinned and laughed, a little coyly but mostly with a breathless kind of satisfaction.

“That was lovely,” John said. “You’re lovely.”

Mary’s irrepressible grin broke out. “You’re pretty lovely yourself.”

Then a squirrel came tearing out of the oak tree, its former branch partner in hot pursuit, and John remarked how they looked exactly like Sherlock chasing that skinny little shoplifter in the grey hoodie only yesterday.

Holding hands, John told her about the case on the way to the park café.

Where they spotted Nirupa striding in their direction, brandishing a mobile phone at Mary.

“Problems with the project,” said Nirupa, not quite apologetically, “I told them you were busy.”

“Not hard enough,” mumbled Mary, but she took the call.

Date three was interrupted by Nirupa again, before Mary even left the flat to join him, because of a plumbing emergency in the kitchen. And in the bathroom. Possibly also in the boiler downstairs. Mary, who counted household plumbing among her numerous practical skills, had to abandone John in favour of avoiding a water damaged home.

And then John got a dozen texts in a row that began with, _I am in need of urgent assistance with this experiment. - SH_ and ended with _John I am not joking, blood flow is becoming an issue and I can’t get the cuffs off. I am texting you with my big toe and will stop when I pass out, and we both know how much that annoys you. - SH_.

So there went date three.

Date four was successful until the point where John walked Mary home to her flat and their half-formed plans to retire to Mary’s living room for some hard core snogging were derailed by Nirupa answering the door looking tearful but dignified and announcing her latest flame had cheated on her.

“Sorry, John,” Mary had said.

“It’s fine. Look after Rupe.”

The snoggage got a look in on date five because they started with that, in the back of the cinema. It also ended with that, as Sherlock flung himself into the seat beside them, congratulated them on finding alternative activities considering how dreadful the film was, then insisted that he needed John at Bart’s because that idiot Thoroughgood wouldn’t let Sherlock examine the corpse without a qualified medical professional in attendance.

“Just because there are signs of Creutzfeld- Jakob. What does he think I’m going to do? Eat the corpse?”

“You have been known to stick things in your mouth that you really shouldn’t.”

The person in the next row called them filthy bastards. John sighed, Mary laughed, and the three of them left.

To be fair, examination of the body helped to solve a murder, a mugging, a theft and a fraud, so there was that.

By the tenth date, three had been curtailed by Sherlock, six by Nirupa and one by the fucking _weather_ , and Mary wasn’t sure whether it was paranoid or just statistical likelihood to lay that one at Nirupa’s door anyway. She suspected Rupe might have paid a shaman of some kind to call down the rain. Or just done the rain dance herself.

Despite the interruptions, things were moving on apace. John and Mary had just clicked. They would hold hands and talk and laugh like old friends, even while kissing like new lovers. Which they weren’t yet. And that annoyed Mary because she really, really, really wanted to get Doctor John Watson naked and in her bed. From the very thoroughly gratifying little sounds he made when they kissed and touched, he was of the same mind.

Things came to a head the night John took Mary to Angelo’s. The meal was indeed going very well, though that was less down to the excellent food than it was to the way Mary had slipped off her shoes and was rubbing her stockinged feet over John’s ankles, calves, thighs, _between_ his thighs… John nearly choked on his pasta and Mary giggled as he swigged red wine to clear his throat.

“You’re very naughty, Mary Morstan,” John told her with a lascivious spark in his eye.

“I am,” she agreed, her toes wriggling their way up again, “And I am hoping that you are very naughty, too.”

“Wicked,” he agreed.

“Good,” she said, and squeezed his cock through his jeans with a curl of her toes. He managed to not groan and slither under the table, but only because he had the self control of a motherfucking superhero.

Things were looking good for heading back to her place. Really, really good. A bit urgent, even…

“John! Answer your damned phone. Hello Mary. I apologise. Case.”

“Hello Sherlock.” Mary smiled but there was a sense of resignation in it.

“You’ve nearly finished the meal. Good. Not interrupting much then.”

John was glaring at Sherlock with a glare that could have stopped an armoured tank.

“Come along,” Sherlock was saying with an equal glare right back at him. “Kidnapping. Murder. Treason. _Fabulous_!”

John smiled a tight, bland smile at Mary, rose (arousal well and truly shrivelled) and grabbed Sherlock by the coat sleeve. With a sharp and angry stride, he tugged Sherlock out the front door and to the alley alongside the restaurant.

Mary followed them. She didn’t want to miss witnessing John go off like an angry firecracker. Plus, she was more than a bit fed up herself.

“What the actual fuck are you doing?” she heard John growl at Sherlock.

“Fetching you to a crime scene,” Sherlock said haughtily back.

“I told you, you don’t have to be in some jealous snit over Mary. I _told_ you…”

“This has nothing to do with Mary.”

“Right.”

“Fine. Stay here. Enjoy your dinner. Go home with her. She wants you desperately, so you can have no fear of rejection, and if last night’s comments about your _blue balls_ are any indication, that situation is certainly amenable to you.”

“Sherlock.” John’s voice was dark and grating. “You have two minutes. Then I’m going to punch you. Then I’m going back to Mary.”

“As you say, John, you told me. I am not _jealous._ Why would I be _jealous_? We’re not _lovers_. We do not intend to _be_ lovers. The thought of me having sex with you strikes me as falling somewhere within the Venn diagram crux of ridiculous, distasteful, awkward and distressing.”

“You forgot ‘hilarious’. No, wait, distressing?”

“Even if I fancied you, which I don’t.”

“Why distressing?”

“Because I am not interested in sex with you any more than you are interested in sex with me, and it’s frankly distressing enough discussing this painful scenario in a stinking restaurant alley let alone contemplating both of us going against our natures and… why am I even discussing this with you? There is a case. Join me or not. As you like.”

“No.”

Mary saw Sherlock pull up short as John grabbed his sleeve again. “Please, Sherlock. I made it clear, about us, about the fact I think Mary actually gets it, gets us. I know you understood. So tell me. You’re not testing me, are you?”

"Of course not _you_."

John called Sherlock a lot of names then, including ‘pillock’ and ‘arse’, and stormed out of the alley only to bump into Mary.  Sherlock followed him, looking distant as he regarded her coolly.

Mary lifted an eyebrow at Sherlock. “I’m an engineer, you know,” she said mildly, “I know all about testing to destruction.”

Sherlock frowned at her.

“So if you’re waiting for me to have a dummy spit over the fact that the two of you will run off to work on cases from time to time, I’ll remind you that I sod off to the rest of the world on a semi regular basis for my own job, and if John can deal with that, I can deal with you two. You utter git.”

Then she smiled at him.

Sherlock blinked at her.

“You can’t test me to failure,” said Mary, endeavouring to be clear, “You don’t know what I’m made of to even try. But I can tell you I’m not brittle, and I don’t break.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her. “Not steel, then. Something altogether more adaptable.”

“You bet, mister.”

“Hello,” said John in great irritation, waving at the two of them, “Still here.”

Mary turned to him. “To be fair to Sherlock, John,” she said, “He’s not the only huge idiot in this whole cockblocking scenario.”

John began to splutter, misunderstanding.

“I’m talking about Rupe, you dope.”

“I am not cockblocking,” declared Sherlock in an offended tone, “I am _solving crime_.”

“Go with him,” Mary said to John, “I have to see Rupe.”

John sighed, nodded, kissed her cheek and promised to call as soon as the case was over.

“He’ll call you in the morning,” said Sherlock, studying Mary with a hard to interpret look.

Mary grinned at him, waved, and left to do something about the… well, _clit_ blocking was probably the right term here.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary goes home to confront Nirupa about the way she's constantly throwing roadblocks between Mary and John. They end up talking about what happened when they met; what they found in each other; what that means now. It also ends up with Nirupa making a suggestion in jest that Mary thinks is absolutely fabulous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay in getting to the next part of this. Regular readers will know that RL has been throwing its own roadblocks in my path. But here's a bit of Mary/Rupe backstory. Coming up next chapter - Mary/John smut!

Nirupa wasn’t home when Mary returned, which gave her time to pour herself a generous glass of wine and have a whisky chaser.  She was sitting in the dark, on her favourite chair, peering at the door when it opened to admit Nirupa at a little after midnight.

Nirupa and her companion were making a mess of entering the flat, mostly because they hardly unlocked lips long enough to see where they were walking.

Mary flicked on the reading lamp beside her chair, and she was suddenly revealed in a cone of harsh brightness.

Nirupa’s new friend squealed a bit in fright. Rupe clutched the pretty young thing close to her, as though prepared to defend her from brigands and assassins (and the heavens knew, she’d done that for Mary in the past). She relaxed momentarily as she saw Mary, then became wary again.

Nirupa seen that look on Mary’s face before. Generally it was never directed at her. Generally, too, it was followed by a monumental take-down that always made the person on the receiving end of it very, very sorry.

“Rupe,” said Mary grimly, “We need to talk.”

“You didn’t say you had a _girlfriend_ ,” complained the pretty thing.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Nirupa said. _I have a stupendously angry platonic soulmate._ “Sorry, Kylie, we’ll have to raincheck.”

“It’s _Kelly_.” And Kelly scowled at Nirupa, threw open the door and left, slamming it closed after her.

Mary shook her head. “Rupe…”

“It was loud at the bar,” Nirupa protested, “And those Australian accents can be hard enough to decipher on a quiet day.”

“You’re a linguist, that’s a lie, and I’m not interested in talking about your new friend.”

“New ex-friend.”

“Rupe. This isn’t funny.”

Nirupa sighed and went to slump on her own chair, positioned opposite Mary’s. Normally, this was one of her favourite things: Mary in her chair, she in her own, and they’d talk, or read in companionable silence, or Mary would offer a hilariously rude commentary on the soap operas Nirupa liked to watch because of their ‘anthropological insights into mainstream white British culture’.

“Rupe, it has to stop.”

Nirupa did Mary the honour of not pretending to be puzzled. “He abandoned you again tonight.”

“For only the third time, and for a case with Sherlock, and might I remind you that I abandoned him at your behest twice that many times, and three times more for trips out to the project. So don’t give me that bullshit. You know John isn’t that kind of a bastard.”

“Then what kind is he?”

“The kind who prefers to solve crimes with a genius, and find danger before it finds him, and generally go out when life is being a prick and kick life in the balls,” said Mary easily, “And, I might add, actually asks about my work and my life and at least appears to be genuinely interested. Which as bastards go, is definitely my kind of bastard. So spit it out. What’s the problem?”

Nirupa folded her hands in her lap and stared at her thumbs. “It’s ridiculous. I know it’s ridiculous. I know it’s childish and infantile. I’m sorry.” She looked up at last, her face a studiously blank mask, “It will stop, Mary. I promise.” She unfolded her hands and began to rise.

“No you don’t,” snapped Mary, her glare not one whit diminished by the look she’d seen lurking in Nirupa’s eyes. “You don’t shut off from me and run away. You sit your arse down, Nirupa D’Souza, and you tell me what the hell is going on in your head.”

Nirupa stood tall, her head tilted up in cold dignity. “Nothing is going on, Mary, and I’m going to bed now. I’m tired.”

But Mary knew her too well. Could read her too well. Nirupa didn’t move, pinned under Mary’s knowing glare.

Mary leaned back in her chair and placed her hands carefully on the arms of it, making a conscious effort to open up her body language.

“John accused Sherlock of testing him tonight. Do you know what Sherlock said? He said he wasn’t testing John. He was testing _me_. Waiting to see how much I’m willing to put up with for John’s sake, I suppose. But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re not testing John. And you’re not even testing me.”

Nirupa just looked at her, the mask slipping. Behind it was sorrow.

“He’s perfect for you,” Nirupa admitted in a colourless voice, “Exactly your kind of bastard.” She smiled a little then. “He’ll make you happy. I have almost no doubt that you’ll do the same for him.”

“Then what’s the problem? And for god’s sake, sit down, you’re giving me a crick in my neck.”

Reluctantly, Nirupa sat.

“Talk to me, Rupe.”

For a moment, Nirupa just stared at the wall. At a photograph behind Mary, on a bookshelf. The two of them, ten years ago. They’d met and bonded almost at once.

Mary waited patiently in the silence. She could outwait the traffic in New Delhi, bureaucratic project obstacles, and the stubborn trout when fly fishing in Poland’s San River after the rain. Outwaiting Nirupa was a doddle.

“I was so alone, when I met you,” Nirupa said at last, still not looking at her. “It was getting to hard to… break the orbit of my family. They had a potential husband lined up for me, and I was so tired of fighting them. And you knew nothing of that when you grinned at me and said ‘This project meeting is pointless. Do you want to bunk off?’ We went on a somewhat unplanned white-water rafting adventure.”

Mary couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “I had been told the river was perfectly safe for a bit of canoeing.”

Nirupa finally met her gaze and smiled back. “What’s a little flash flooding, really?”

“Only a _very_ little,” Mary agreed.

“I fell out of the canoe, you fell out trying to get me back in, you had to get us both to shore and it took us three hours to walk back to the camp.”

“You have to admit it gave me a lot more respect for the terrain we’d be working in.”

“And for the local shepherds who helped us find our way back. Yes.”

“It was fun,” insisted Mary.

“Yes. It was. It was brilliant. You showed me that the rules aren’t everything. You… freed me from them.”

Mary tilted her head in puzzlement. “Rupe…”

“In some ways, you saved me Mary. You taught me I really could have another life than the one laid out for me. I’d been taking steps that way, but the old life was trying to drag me back, and you showed up and, simple as cutting ribbon, you cut me free. But now… you have found your match. And it’s so obvious that he’s right for you; that perhaps… days of white-water rafting by accident are passing.”

Then she clenched her hands in her lap and looked at her thumbs again.

Mary was so flabbergasted she didn’t know where to start.

Perhaps, then, to start at the beginning. With that project, and their first meeting.

“You say I cut you free, Rupe, but do you really not know what you did for me? I was so angry at having been a sort of prisoner growing up that I went a little crazy. I was rebelling against everything, all the time. I was dangerous. God, the stupid things I used to do. That day, if you hadn’t been with me, I’d probably have tried to paddle over the waterfall, and drowned, like that poor kid the week after. But you were there and you couldn’t bloody swim, which you didn’t say before we took off. So I had to dive in after you, after nearly getting you killed. I got you ashore, and I was feeling like a monster, and you sat there all covered in mud and weeds and you laughed so hard I thought you must have hit your head on a rock. And you looked at me like I was the bloody rainbow after the storm and said ‘You crazy English girl, that was fantastic. Can we go again?’, but we’d lost the canoe by then.”

Rupe grinned. “And one of your shoes. You had to wrap your foot in leaves for cushioning. A very clever idea.”

“I was just so grateful I hadn’t killed you by being so stupid. You were the most amazing person I’d ever met, and I was this hare-brained thing throwing myself off metaphorical cliffs just because I could. And that day, everything changed. You anchored me without tying me down. You gave me something steady to hold onto without feeling trapped. I'd probably be dead by now if it weren't for you.”

Here, Mary rose and half-stumbled across the space between them, landing on her knees at Nirupa’s feet so she could grasp her friend’s hands in her own.

“Whatever happens with John,” she said, looking up into Nirupa’s eyes, “You don’t lose me. You’ll never lose me. I’m not giving you up for anybody. Not even my perfect bastard. And in case you hadn’t noticed, John and Sherlock feel the same way. About each other, I mean. After everything they’ve been through, Moriarty and that fake suicide business. If that’s not a friendship forged in fire, I don’t know what is. And John’s made it clear that Sherlock is a non-negotiable part of his life.” 

“That's not right,” Nirupa scowled, “It should be all about you.” 

“Would you _listen_ to yourself, Rupe? I don't _want_ to be the be-all and end-all of someone's life. Look what that did to my mother.”

Unconvinced, Nirupa stared at Mary, brown eyes shining with pre-emptive grief. “What room will there be for me?”

“All the room in the world,” Mary promised her fervently, “We’ll make room, and if John’s got any issues with that, then it’s off. _Over._ I can’t be with someone who doesn’t see how important you are to me. You’re the sister of my soul, Rupe, and those guys in the past who didn’t get that, I got shot of them, quick smart.”

Mary rose up on her knees and took Nirupa’s face in her hands, the better to make her friend _understand_. “But he gets me, Rupe. He gets _us_. He's not going to make me choose. He's got his own Nirupa. Who is giving him similar hell, by the way."

“As if John would abandon him,” snorted Nirupa, but there was a kind of approval in the sound.

“Exactly.” Mary pressed her forehead to Nirupa’s. “Please. Stop this nonsense. You’re not losing me. We are partners from now to the end of all things. You're the one who keeps me sane. And I'm not going to settle down and be a good little hausfrau. I'm not one for picket fences and babies.  I love my life. I love what I do. And I love you. Don't be afraid. And don't wish for me something society thinks I should have that I don't want for myself. I want it _all_ , Rupe. My job, my best friend, and someone waiting here in London who loves me, who has his own life too and doesn’t mind the wait. I've only ever managed two out of three before. Maybe John will make the trifecta. Maybe I'll be the one to make his.”

At last, Nirupa moved, wrapping her arms around Mary’s shoulders and holding tight. “I’m sorry I’ve been such an idiot, Mary.  He is so good for you, but I’ve been so afraid. I didn’t want to give you up without fighting for you.”

“Idiot,” said Mary, half affectionately, half irritated, “I’m not some bloody competition prize. I choose who I’ll be with and I choose you both. And Sherlock as well, by the looks of it. It’s going to be a jam-packed relationship, Rupe, with four of us in it, but at least two of us are quite smart at any given time. I’m sure we’ll work it out.”

Nirupa laughed suddenly, leaning back and wiping her eyes. “Well, there are those tribes where the menfolk sleep in one hut and the womenfolk in another, with conjugal huts in the middle. Perhaps we’ll be like that.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Mary with a laugh, “But there’s no need for a third flat, surely. John and I can be conjugal in our own rooms, if you and Sherlock ever bloody let us. I am dying to get a leg over, in case you hadn’t noticed. Lovely arse, beautiful hands, broad shoulders and god the smile on him. And the man knows how to _kiss_ , Nirupa.”

“Spare me the details!” Nirupa held her hands up, warding off more detail, but she was laughing.

“I’m telling you, the combination of beautiful mouth, beautiful arse and beautiful hands is the sexual trifecta for me.”

“I’m aware.”

“And he _sings_. It’s like someone made a mash-up of all my favourite things. It could only be better if he was dipped in chocolate.”

Nirupa grinned wickedly. “Given time, perhaps you can persuade him to that. You _are_ the most persuasive woman I know.”

Instead of being abashed by the observation, Mary merely stopped to visualise such a thing. She took a deep breath and let her vivid imagination take its loving time with the detail.

“You,” she said to Nirupa, a little breathlessly, “Have some of the _best_ ideas.”

But Nirupa had fled to the kitchen, shouting out something about a tea and rum nightcap, leaving Mary to giggle (and determined to research the optimum temperature for melting chocolate for such a purpose. Maybe Sherlock would know. Ah. No. Best not to ask Sherlock.)

Mary rose and went to the kitchen. “You okay now, Rupe?”

Nirupa took Mary’s hands in her own. “Yes.”

“No more of this ridiculous clit-blocking?”

“None. Though I reserve the right to do something terrible to him if he ever hurts you.”

Mary kissed Nirupa’s cheek. “If he turns out to be a prick after all, you can get in line.”

“He won’t be, though,” Nirupa assured her, “I can tell.”

Mary grinned, happily. “Me too.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock have a fight on the footpath outside Mary and Nirupa's house, and just when it looks like it's all going to fall apart, it all comes together. Former antagonists finally do the opposite of cock-blocking, and the good times begin with a shower. Just as soon as Sherlock has sent a text message he probably shouldn't have sent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the John and Mary first time begins! (But hasn't ended yet. Oh no.)

Nirupa wasn’t a woman who fussed much with her appearance. Mary liked to tease her that it was nice for her that she was so effortlessly lovely. Rupe would generally blow a raspberry at that point, or make the googly-eyed face that a Costa Rican construction worker had once compared to a red-eyed tree frog. Nirupa thanked him for the compliment, which had confused him mightily. But Nirupa admired those frogs. They were very pretty.

Nirupa’s main vanity was her hair. Long, dark, lustrous, she brushed it assiduously every morning and night. Which was how she came to be sitting at the window seat and saw John and Sherlock stomping down the path towards the flat.

“Mary! The boys are on their way.” She kneeled closer to the window. “It looks like John’s been in the Thames again.”

Mary hurried over to lean over Rupe’s shoulder. Ah yes. The unmistakable signs of John Watson, wet to the bone, splattered in mud and bits of detritus and wearing the expression of the thunderously fed up to the back teeth. He was marching so fast and furiously that even Sherlock, with his long stride, was lagging behind.

They couldn’t hear the exchange from their second storey flat with the window closed, but the body language was clear enough.

John turned smartly on the spot, a militarily executed heel-spin, and jabbed a raging finger at Sherlock so that Sherlock pulled up short.

A certain amount of angry shouting followed, John expressing himself in terse, short and rather fruity syllables, if his body language and Sherlock’s indignant expression were any indication. John was so riled at one point he appeared to be having trouble resisting simply hauling off and punching Sherlock in the face.

And then that face was suddenly so vulnerable and desperate that Mary stopped feeling so pleased at the dressing down Sherlock was getting and felt a bit sorry for him instead. He looked like a man in the process of losing his best friend. And that wasn’t on. He’d been a moron, certainly, but surely he and John wouldn’t…

Some faltering further conversation took place, John becoming increasingly hesitant, and then it was as though someone had punched John in the solar plexus. All the fight had gone right out of him and instead he was almost swaying, leaning towards Sherlock without taking a step. Listening intently.

And at last the two men were hugging on the street outside the door of their building, and they were laughing, and it was going to be all right.

She hoped.

“John is making Sherlock wet on purpose,” said Nirupa, grinning appreciatively at the gesture, “John thinks it’s funny.”

Mary grinned. “So does Sherlock. So do I.”

Their doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it.” Nirupa smiled impishly at Mary. “Whatever they want, I’ll try to take Sherlock out for coffee. Leave you to help John clean up. He looks like a drowned rat.”

“An adorable drowned rat,” said Mary staunchly, “Did you see the way his trousers were clinging to that bum of his?”

“Honestly? No.” Nirupa tried to school down the laugh as she answered the buzzer and pretended to have no idea who it was. “Hello?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” said Sherlock in sharp tones, sounding a little pompous, “I need to consult with you, Dr D’Souza, on a piece of evidence.”

“Come on up.”

But then John was on the intercom, begging off because he thought he was too smelly for the delicate company upstairs. Nirupa thought she’d have to tell him about some of Mary’s less savoury mishaps sometime.

“Okay. We’ll be right down."

“You’ll take Sherlock for a walk?” Mary asked as they both headed for their door.

“As long as you want,” Nirupa promised.

“Let’s see if we can take three hours to start with.”

“I will do my best.”

“That’s my Rupe.”

It was pretty quick work on the footpath for Nirupa to step outside to intercept Sherlock while Mary did the whole ‘solicitous little woman’ thing and brought John inside. It was clear to both women that Sherlock allowed that to happen. Excellent news. It looked like at least two – and possibly all four – of them were being quite smart today.

“God, Mary, I’m sorry,” John was apologising, trying to keep his distance, “I reek to heaven. Had to jump into the river. Sherlock told me to jump onto a barge, and he knew full well it would have passed by the time I hit. By the time _I_ realised, it was too late, and went straight into the bloody Thames. Git thought I was about to speared, so I suppose he meant well.”

“Don’t worry about it, John,” Mary laughed, “I’ve smelled worse. Myself, I mean.”

“Oh?”

“Fell into a latrine pit. Not deep, thankfully, but those were shoes that I never tried to retrieve, I can tell you.”

“… Oh.”

Okay, so maybe not the best short anecdote to tell the man you were hoping to get naked with soon. _Hell._ But he was grinning.

“Go ahead,” said Mary bravely, “Laugh. I did. You should have seen the other guy.”

“There was another guy?”

“He was under the impression I had stolen his horse.”

“And had you?”

“Of course I had. He treated it appallingly. He didn’t need the horse anyway. He was just doing it to spite his son. So I took the horse - leaving money, so technically it was a purchase - gave the horse to the son, and lit out across the property. Nirupa did her best to run interference but I took a wrong turn and got stuck in a shallow bit of the pit. The other guy thought I was puffed out and pelted in after me, waving a big stick and threatening me with a thrashing. Nirupa threw a rock at him and he fell flat on his face. He spent three weeks in hospital. I’d have felt bad about it, but he was a sadistic bastard so we had champagne instead.”

And once more, instead of being horrified by her fabulously misspent life, John just burst out laughing. “You can get nasty diseases, falling in latrine pits,” he said.

“And this guy got most of them. It was beautiful to read about. I’m only sorry about my shoes. They were a great fit.”

By then, they were in Mary’s flat. She pointed him towards the bathroom. “Towels in the second shelf of the cupboard, shampoo and what have you on the rack. My robe is behind the door and should fit you, so I can shove your clothes in the wash for you.”

“Thanks, Mary. That’ll take a while, I guess.”

“A few hours. These need the full heavy duty cycle treatment, I think.”

“I’m sure we’ll think of something to do with ourselves while we wait.”

And even reeking of fish and slime, John Watson was the most gorgeous thing on two legs she’d ever seen. His eyes had that twinkle and his smile was deliciously charming and wicked, and Mary thought she might combust from the anticipation.

She waited at the door until it opened a crack and John’s bare left arm shoved a bundle of wet and foul-smelling clothes towards her. She caught a glimpse of his biceps – of which she approved intensely – and the scar on his shoulder.

The door closed and she heard the shower running. Then she took the clothes downstairs to the communal laundry room and put them on a heavy duty wash. That was at least two hours of guaranteed mostly naked boyfriend delivered on a platter. 

Her phone pipped. She pulled it from her pocket to read the message.

 _Do not hurt him. – SH_.

Of all the…

Another pip.

_Please. – SH_

Mary thought that might be the sweetest threatening text message she’d ever received. She tapped the call button and held the phone to her ear. It rang and was answered almost immediately.

“Mary,” said Sherlock, deadpan. Mary thought he was probably panicking.

“I won’t,” she said, “I couldn’t. He’s wonderful.”

“Yes,” agreed Sherlock, still deadpan.

“You really shouldn’t worry,” she said, waiting for the lift to take her back up to John, “John needs you like breathing, Sherlock. The way I need Rupe. I’m not going to get between you or replace you, because I can’t, and I don’t want to. John doesn't want to pretend he wants a normal life with a normal girlfriend and that's frankly a relief, because I can't give him that. It’s not who I am, or what I do, or I what I want. John and I will be something else, whatever that turns out to be. He doesn't need me the same way he needs you.”

“And yet,” said Sherlock, the emotionless delivery vanishing at last, “He does need you.”

“I hope so,” said Mary, “I hope in the same way I need him.”

There was a long pause and then Sherlock said: “John is an extraordinary person. He deserves… better than he’s had.”

Mary didn’t know what to say to that, and the lump in her throat made it hard to speak anyway. “He’s got you,” she said at last, “And you are quite extraordinary yourself.”

“That's not what his girlfriends usually say.” There was a lilt of humour in his tone.

“What do they usually say?”

“‘I hope the two of you will be very happy’.”

“Well, you are though, the two of you. You have incredible lives together. Perhaps you could think of us as… not losing a doctor but gaining an engineer. Oh, and a world-class anthropologist. Which I suppose means that Rupe and I are gaining a doctor and a genius, so we’re all doing pretty well, wouldn’t you say?”

Sherlock’s laugh was unexpected and welcome. “The anthropologist is certainly proving useful.”

“Oh, good, Rupe will be pleased. She’s always wanted to be helpful to The Great Detective. Ah… don’t tell her I said that. She’ll be mortally embarrassed.”

“My lips are sealed,” he promised, “You should go now. Your lift has arrived.” And he hung up, just as the ping sounded.

**

John was still in the shower when Mary returned to the flat. She could hear him singing.

_Every day, it’s a-getting’ closer_

_Going faster than a rollercoaster_

_Love like yours will surely come my way._

He put quite a lot of flair into the final _A-hey, a-hey-hey_. Mary strongly suspected he was dancing under the flow. And _that_ she really, really wanted to see.

She tapped on the door and opened it a crack. “John? Mind if I come in?”

He’d stopped singing abruptly, but then he replied, “I wouldn’t say I’m presentable, exactly, but I don’t smell like a fish cemetery any more.”

Mary kicked off her shoes outside the bathroom and went in. The shower stall was sadly filled with steam and she could only just make out limbs and torso through the fog and falling water. She pulled off her shirt and unzipped her skirt and dropped them into the laundry hamper.

“Some of the Thames soaked into my clothes while I was carrying yours to the laundry,” she said, “I need a shower.” Stockings off next. Bra.

The shower screen slid aside and John Watson stood in the gap. Glistening wet, hair slicked back, blue eyes bright with amusement and anticipation.

“You’d better join me, then.”

The steam had roiled ceilingward and as Mary bent to slip her knickers off, she appreciated the view. Nice calves. Good thighs, and oh my, what a very promising cock, already on the rise. Broad chest and narrow waist, and those shoulders, god and _oh, oh, oh_ that smile and those _eyes_.

John moved to allow her room to step into the shower, and he slid an arm around her waist, drawing her near.

“Hello, Mary,” he murmured and brushed his nose against hers, the tip of it tracing left along her cheek as he tilted his head and pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth.

“Hello, beautiful,” Mary said, pressing closer to his warm, wet body, smoothing her hands over his hips and back, to the rise of his arse, “You smell a lot better now.”

John laughed, a soft chuckle, and drew back a little. “I know from tragic experience how hard it is to get the Thames off. Care to help me with a third scrub?”

Mary leaned up ever so slightly to kiss him and slid her hands up his back, across his ribs to his stomach, up to his pecs and over his nipples. It felt every bit as lovely as she’d imagined, and he made a breathless little noise as both his hands shifted to cup her backside.

She reached past his shoulder to pick up the green tea shower gel. She poured a generous amount into her palm – replacing the bottle on the shelf – and brought the scented soap to his chest. Then she took her sweet time, using both hands, to lather it into foam over his chest, shoulders, arms. He tilted his head up and she ran her fingertips over his throat, beside his Adam’s apple.

More gel, applied now to his diaphragm, then her fingertips traced down to his belly and while they kissed, her soapy hand slid over his thickening erection.

John had caught up some of the foam and he gently washed her ribs and hips, then up, softly, softly, to cup her breasts. His thumbs slid easily over her stiffened nipples and his mouth only left hers briefly, to nuzzle at her skin, to take little sipping kisses of her eyelids, her throat. His cheek, the tip of his nose, his warm breath, caressed her face.

“Mary,” he murmured, and that was vocabulary enough. She pressed close to him, loving the feeling of his chest against her breasts, his erection against her abdomen. She mouthed and sucked at his throat, down his left shoulder and that terrible bullet scar, but she paid it no especial attention – that scar may have changed the trajectory of his life but there were other things that defined him more – and gently kiss-bit his bicep. He laughed again, that endearing little giggle, and suckled at her earlobe.

Cuddled in his arms, Mary reached for the gel again, and he held still to let her, and to let her wash his back. Her arms were so full of him as her hands slid up to his neck, down his shoulders (and the more terrible scar of the exit wound, not seen yet, but she could feel the dent in the muscle) and down, over his shoulder blades (moving gently as his own hands slid slick and soaped down her back, to her swell of her bum).

Down to his own lovely, lovely backside, which she longed to see bared to her, but for now delighted in exploring by touch alone. Over the rise, under the fall, her fingers scented with gel and sliding into the cleft of his bum and down and over his…

John froze.

Mary froze.

“Sorry,” she muttered, “I…” _have ruined the mood_ “…Should have asked.”

“No,” John said a little breathlessly. He seemed to be considering it. He turned his face to nuzzle at her throat and his hands squeezed her bum. “I haven’t… no-one’s done that before. But… I… er…” His hips tilted towards her, and she felt how hard he’d become. “I think I liked it.”

“Would you… like me… to help you make sure?”

That laugh again and his mouth sought hers before replying and their tongues met and twined, and John rolled his hips against hers again. “Please,” he breathed, and so she dipped her fingers down again, over the soft skin of his anus, just the pads of her fingers, softly rubbing up and down, and the thrust of his hips against hers became less gentle.  She could feel the shaft of his cock dragging against her mons.

Shower sex, Mary reminded herself, could end in tears. Sometimes broken bones. Contusions. Glorious as this was, it was time to move somewhere altogether more flexible.

“Are you clean enough yet, do you think?”

“Nearly,” he conceded, and held her waist tight as he now tilted his hips back, into her fingers slipping so sweetly against his arsehole, and he was smiling at her like she was a revelation. “That really is… _ah…_ very nice. I hadn’t expected to like that.”

“Maybe I can surprise you with some other things.”

His grin was a little wild then, in definite approval. Mary took that wonderful mouth in a kiss, teasing his tongue with hers.

“God, John, please,” Mary breathed into his mouth, “Let me take you to bed.”

“Oh, god, yes,” John agreed, and pushed the shower screen aside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have written the fight on the street from John and Sherlock's point of view, and the conversation that Sherlock then has with Nirupa (and what happens with them next while their besties are... busy) but I'll post that when this story is done.
> 
> John and Sherlock's fight from their pov is now up - as Fighting for a Reason a That We Can't Ignore.
> 
> And [this is a pretty red-eyed tree frog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_eyed_tree_frog_edit2.jpg)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Mary finally make it, naked, to the bedroom. For two people in such a hurry to get to bed, they are taking their time to get to the orgasms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the .... coitus ineruptus last chapter. But now you know how John and Mary have been feeling all this time. 
> 
> This chapter is almost pure smut. I hope you enjoy it even half as much as they do. Because they really, really do.

For two people who had been so desperate to get naked together, John and Mary were taking their time over getting to the actual sex.  They stood for a while on the bathmat, dabbing each other dry with towels and tongues - the latter a marvellous device for licking up the stray droplets that ran from the ends of John's hair down his neck, or from his chest towards his navel; from the hollow of Mary's throat down between her breasts, and down her shoulders to the ticklish crook of her arm.

It was serious business, but they kept laughing softly together, savouring the touch and the occasional silliness. Mary pressing the towel to John's wet hair, sweetly soft at first, then suddenly burying her fingers in the towel to more roughly dry his scalp, leaving him with hair stuck up every which way. In retaliation, John play-growled and nipped at her throat - which she exposed to him willingly enough - then sucked on the spot and gentled his mouth to a soothing kiss.

Dry enough to heir mutual impatience to move this along, Mary opened the bathroom door. "Down to the left. Last room on the right."

John gave her a speculative look, but she patted his bum and he obligingly went ahead of her.

Mary enjoyed the view as she followed him. The promise of his arse in jeans and the cling of river-soaked trousers was more than fulfilled, and he had this way of walking, a commanding strut - and _oh_ , the way he straightened his shoulders then, knowing that she was looking. He paused and looked back at her, grinned, and resumed, feet padding on the carpet.  His pantheresque stride shot her through with desire, and she felt a fresh wave of wetness heating her cunt.

She could see the other scar better now. She'd seen the one where the bullet had entered, felt it with her fingertips as they'd canoodled in the back of the cinema. This scar was larger, not really worse, but also not really important, except that it was the badge of a past pain that she hated to think of him bearing.

But they all had past hurts, and this one was an integral part of the John she knew. It neither repulsed nor attracted her.  This was just John, this was his body, and she had already learned to love his body as she knew she was already loving his heart and mind.

In the bedroom, he stood by the bed and she moved in behind him, slipped her arms around his waist and kissed the top of his spine.

"Do you want to ask about them?" he asked quietly, and she knew he meant the scars. They’d talked of all sorts of thing in the last few months – in person and over the phone, including the awkward and anticipatory topics of health status, contraception, oh yes, they were _so_ ready – but never about that.

"No," she said, "Unless you want to talk about it."

"No.  I don't think about it much any more."

"You're perfect," said Mary, her hands stroking his belly.

"Hardly." His laugh was a little rueful.

She kissed his damaged shoulder, across his back, between his shoulder blades, across to the other side. "And you have a magnificent arse."

He laughed properly at that and turned in the circle of her arms to kiss her.

"I have scars of my own" she told him on an impulse, "Just little ones. They meant something at the time but now they're just part of the landscape."

But there was something in the way she said it that made him pause. He drew away a little and watched the flicker of her gaze down to a mark below her right breast. A thin white line, two centimetres long. No telling what had caused it now. He brushed his thumb across the ridge of it and she closed her eyes.

"It's all right," she said, though it hadn't been at the time.

John ignored her words and listened to her voice and bent to kiss the little scar. Kissing it better, in a way, she thought, and how on earth did he know that nobody ever had? Mary ran her fingers through his sandy hair, marvelling at him, and saw again the scar in his hairline that she knew John's father had given him. With John's face pressed to her ribs, she in turn brushed that sad scar and bent to kiss it. 

 _He deserves better than he's had_ , Sherlock had said, and it was true. _We all deserve better than we've had_ , Mary decided.

With her fingers on his chin, she guided John back up so she could kiss him.

And suddenly, where there had been patience and languorous appreciation, now there was urgency and fire. Mouths and hands and tongues and whole bodies sliding and exploring with impatience and delight. Mary pulled John towards the bed and half fell onto the mattress, and his hands were under her bottom, helping to shift her further back and giving him room to follow her onto the mattress.

His knees were on either side of her right thigh to begin with, and his nuzzling kisses led him to lip one peaked nipple, a soft lick-and-suckle, and she arched, trying to give him more. He obliged and lapped over the pebbled skin with the flat of his tongue before suckling more firmly, making her gasp.

One hand was at her other breast, playing lightly with her other nipple. His free hand caressed her hip, her thigh, then brushed between her legs - she spread them for him and then his fingers were sliding between the lips of her cunt, seeking moisture, gathering it, and then, _oh then_ , sliding up and down, up and down, making every fold and groove wet and sticky and so so so so sensitive.

Mary pushed against his fingers and his mouth; she wriggled towards him, gasping, her hands on his shoulders, clutching him close. She bent her knees and drew them up, splayed them open. "John.  Oh god. John. John."

He leaned up to meet her mouth and they kissed with tongues entwined, and his fingers made that little shift to swirl around but not on, _not yet_ , her clit.

Desperate suddenly for more of him against her whole body, Mary wound her arms around his ( _beautiful_ ) shoulders, across his ( _broad, strong_ ) back; lifted her left leg (her right still bracketed by his [ _gorgeous, toned_ ] thighs) to hook her calf over his ( _smooth, perfect_ ) hip.

She urged him closer but instead of going down to meet her skin, John slid his arms under her back and scooped her up towards him. He lifted her into a tangled embrace, nestled her flush against his ( _compact, oh god, beautiful_ ) body and he kissed her face and throat while she held tight to him. She was straddling his thigh now and pushed her crotch down against it, seeking friction. He smiled into his kisses and tensed his thigh muscle, to give her more hardness to push against.

"That's it," John murmured, one hand sliding down to rest at the top of her bum, his fingers stroking lightly into the very top of the fold as she ground against him, "Mary. God. Gorgeous. You’re gorgeous."

Mary laughed in breathless delight and threw her head back, and John nuzzled and licked her bared throat. His arms tightened around her and cradled her firmly against his still body while she wriggled and gasped against him.

It wasn't only her own sensations making Mary gasp. John was so _strong_ , with an easy strength that belied the damage to his shoulder. He worked on it, she knew, with a focused physio regime - fearful, she suspected, in case the inherent weakness someday let Sherlock down. As if John would ever fail his friend. His dedication to Sherlock Holmes was one of the many things she found so powerfully attractive about John. She understood and admired it.  How could she not, with a soul-friend of her own? It's how she knew that he understood her and Rupe too.

Mary was getting too close to climax, tension coiling in her cunt and clit, and so she stopped moving with a little gasp and decided it was time to explore her lovely John again.

She took his face in her hands and they kissed thoroughly before she trailed her lips down his jaw and throat - he tipped his head back to let her - then shifted on his lap so that she could bend down to find out whether his nipples were sensitive.

They were, a little. He liked it best when she held the nub between her teeth, firmly but not too hard, and flicked it with her tongue, then soothed it with a lick and a kiss. She busied herself, making him arch and whimper and whisper her name, one hand stroking through her short, dark hair, the other flexing on her hip.

Mary kissed his chest and put a hand on his cock, and he buried his moan against the skin of her throat.  A few strokes - he thrust with some restraint into her hand - and she reached further to fondle his balls. He shuddered deliciously.

She moved her fingers further back. "Would you like me to rub you again?" she murmured in his ear.

"Yes. Fuck, god, Mary, please, yes." And, still kneeling, he spread his thighs almost without thought.

Mary pulled away from him and looked down, and so he looked down too, to see her rise up a fraction, reach between her own legs, to drag her fingers through her own wetness, and then slip her slicked, sticky-damp fingers underneath him to delicately rub his perineum, and back, against his hole, while her other hand resumed light, maddening strokes of his cock.

She rubbed and stroked, and he spread his thighs further, head thrown back, chanting hoarsely, "Mary. Mary. God. Yes. You. You. God. Please. Mary. Mary."

From this angle she couldn't kiss his mouth. She pressed her face to his belly instead, rubbing her cheek against the blond hair sprinkling his stomach. _So perfect._

"Christ. Fuck. That's amazing. That's… Mary… _ah_ … no. God better… better stop now. I can't... not yet, Mary... I don’t want… not yet…"

She stopped, and instantly his hands slid down her ribs, and one slid between her legs to teasingly rub her, too. She bore down on John’s fingers, and he obliged, moving his hand so that two fingers slid briefly inside her. Mary groaned, grinned, thrust down onto his fingers with, _“John! God_ …”

John, grinning with her, withdrew his sticky fingers and, making sure she was watching, put them in his own mouth, licking them to savour her taste. Mary surged up to kiss him, to taste herself on him too. 

And then, because she had wanted to, ever since he had seen his burgeoning erection in the shower, she bent low and slipped her mouth over his very hard, beautifully thick cock.

John, the man with the self-control of a motherfucking superhero, jerked his hips briefly and moaned wantonly before mastering himself. He stroked her shoulders apologetically and held himself still. "You're going to kill me dead, Mary Morstan," he choked out, laughter in the desperation, “And I’m going to love every second of it.”

Mary had liked that momentary sensation of soft-skinned hardness surging into her mouth, but his stillness was good too, and the little sounds he made as she fit his velvet-skinned crown, salty with pre-cum, between her lips and over her tongue, heavy and hot and thick and _perfect_.

Until his breath started to hitch - and she pulled away, sat up and wrapped her arms around him, and then she tipped back towards the bed, tugging him down with her.

As they gave in to the controlled tumble, each moved to accommodate the other, knees shifting, hands guiding, and Mary was on her back, her legs wrapped around his hips as he kneeled between her thighs, his cock nudging at her with little thrusts.

“Oh, John, please, please, now, _now_ …” the arches of Mary’s feet smoothed over his calves and his splayed his hands across her hips and lifted her a fraction and then, _oh god_ then he was sliding into her wet heat, and she could feel him moving inside her, feel his pubic mound too, as he rolled his hips in slow, deliberate motion, so that he rubbed against the walls inside her, and ground against her clit, then pulled slowly out and repeated the motion.

Mary, hands in his hair, flexed her spine, angling first her hips and then her breasts towards him, and her clever John dropped his head to suckle one breast then the other, and she undulated beneath him, loving it, loving the feeling of him hard inside her, and pressing on her clit, and soft and sucking on her breasts, _good god_ , he felt absolutely _brilliant_ against every part of her.

“John, oh oh oh _Jo….oooooooooooohhhhhnnnffffgggh_!” and she came, crying out with wanton abandon, head thrown back, clutching to him with arms and thighs, pushing her hips up to envelop him more deeply still, fucking him and being fucked.

Then he changed his angle, less of the grinding roll, more of the direct thrust, into her, right up into her, while he chanted her name and then shouted out too, inarticulate but perfect in his meaning, the pleasure and the joy of her body and his, and then, hips still rocking, his cock still sliding into her, he kissed and kissed and kissed her face and throat and hair until finally, finally, they subside into stillness together.

And held to each other, panting, and giggled breathlessly, because that, _oh my god_ , that had been worth the wait.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They start, sticky and entwined on the bedspread. They end the same way, too. In between there are stories and confessions, new ways of seeing things, the unspoken promise that they understand each other. Also the application of food stuffs in unhygienic ways.

For a long time, John and Mary lay entwined, sweaty and sticky on top of the bedspread they hadn't even bothered to fold out of the way before they'd begun, kissing and tracing each other's faces and arms and bodies with reverent fingertips - and laughing breathlessly together, for no reason other than that they were happy.

When Mary's arms began to goosebump, though, John insisted they get themselves under the covers to warm up. first, Mary fished under her pillow for the T-shirt she usually wore to bed and John used it to clean them up a little before tugging the blankets back and getting properly into bed. (The bedspread would need a wash later, a thought that made Mary feel more smug than anything.)

John's method of warming up included running his hands over Mary's belly while he nuzzled at her breasts again, and since this dovetailed quite nicely with Mary's own heat-enhancing program of caressing his back and winding her legs around his as much as she was able, this worked out very well for a time.

John eventually pressed his lips in a delicate line from her nipples back up to her mouth and then nudged his nose into the lovely hollow behind her ear. Mary threaded her fingers through his fine hair and wondered at how much she loved doing that.

"I have to say," she said in a voice rich with humour, "Two months of foreplay can result in spectacular sex, though I think we can do just as well with less lead time."

"Hmm," he agreed, mouth momentarily busy on her earlobe, and then he suggested, "Practice will of course make perfect."

Mary giggled and nuzzled her nose into the top of his head.  He smelled deliciously of clean hair and recent perspiration and sex. "We have another hour for your wash cycle to finish."

"Then my clothes have to dry."

"Indeed.  So we must make good use of our time."

"We must. Especially when we don't know when that pair of geniuses we call family will let us have more of it."

"Oh, I think they've sorted themselves out." Mary ran her hands down his flanks, reaching for his arse again. She couldn't quite make it, so John obligingly wriggled up higher. Mary rested her head on his chest and patted his bum with one hand. He brushed his nose against her temple, and she thought that she would never get tired of how he used mouth, cheeks, nose and lips to kiss her.

"Could be right," John conceded. "Hopefully they're keeping busy with the tail end of the case and Sherlock's not getting Nirupa dunked in the bloody river." Then he froze with a slightly alarmed look on his face.

"I wouldn't worry about Rupe," Mary told him, "She has an uncanny ability to emerge unscathed from adventures. The two of them will probably stand around at the end, fiddling with their beautiful hair while ruin and desolation rain down on everyone else."

John laughed so hard at that image that in the end he had to stifle the giggles against Mary's shoulder. Mary didn't bother to stifle her laughter at all.

When they regained mastery of their mirth, John lay cradled against Mary's body, his head on her shoulder, with her fingers playing with his fine hair, arms around each other's waists.

"I like your bear," remarked John after a pleasant lull, looking across to her bedside table, where a worn teddy bear of fearsome-yet-adorable aspect sat lop-sidedly against her reading lamp. Its shaggy black fur was threadbare and it looked well-travelled.

"That's Professor Challenger," said Mary, "My father gave him to me for my seventh birthday, the year before he and his friend Paul were killed in Kashmir.  He's named after a character in these really old adventure books Dad used to read to me when I was little, before he and Mum divorced. The Professor has travelled the world with me and Rupe."

She reached out for the bear and placed him on her diaphragm for John's closer inspection. "He's the reason I have that scar," she said, not certain until she spoke that she meant to tell the story.

John brushed the tip of his finger across the mark and kissed her collar bone, attentive but undemanding. Mary held the mock-ferocious bear around its squishy middle.

"I don't remember why I was in trouble. I was always getting into mischief. But I'd been locked in my room without tea and my stepdad confiscated the Professor and said I'd get him back when I could behave like a civilised little girl. I wasn't even allowed out to use the loo. They left me with a chamber pot."

John frowned and his hand on her skin tightened momentarily before he made himself relax. Mary noted the motion, considering his sudden tension on her behalf.

"I was having none of that," she continued, "Nobody separates the Professor and me. My room was on the top floor, so I opened the window and climbed out. The plan was to get down, sneak inside to find him and then go back to my room to hide him. Only I fell when I was nearly all the way down the ivy and landed on the rose garden. That one was the deepest cut. It wasn't so bad really, but Mum and Colin were furious. Upset too, but since nothing was actually broken, I didn’t get a lot of sympathy. The only reason I didn't get into more trouble was that I told them I was trying to get to a proper loo. A chamber pot wasn't _civilised_ , I said. So they patched me up with plasters and sent me back to bed - but not before mum gave me my bear back to comfort me after hurting myself. Colin thought she was being soft and that I was too old for bears anyway, but she won that fight. I was only eight, and word had only come back about Dad and Paul being shot in Kashmir the month before."

John's fingers flexed again, as though he wanted to use his hands to throttle someone but had chosen restraint over revenge.  He stroked his flat palms against her skin, softly, lovingly. “My poor Mary,” he said instead, as though this new knowledge of her past hurt him somehow. He traced his finger over her scar softly and stretched up to kiss her jaw, then further to kiss her cheek. “I hate to think of anyone treating you like that.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said airily, but then she trailed her own fingers down his face, down that expression that showed he wanted to defend her if only he knew how.

“I know,” John said, and he smiled to show he believed it, too, “I can’t imagine anyone getting the better of you for long. Even when you were eight.”

 _It's not really his impulse to defend me that I like so much_ , Mary thought _. It's how he controls the impulse. I can look after myself. But he'll be there if I need him._ _I like that a lot._

Mary lifted the black bear in her hands to regard it with affection. "I used a screwdriver to loosen a skirting board and hid the Professor in the wall during danger periods after that, to keep him safe, until I left home when I was sixteen. He was the only thing I took with me, apart from a few changes of clothes and Dad’s copy of _The Lost Worl_ d. He used to tell me it’s what got him into archaeology."

Then she laughed and burrowed the bear against John’s chest, making little _rowr_ noises, like it was attacking him. John pretended to defend himself and then flopped back on the bed, arms spread wide: “I surrender! I surrender!”

“That’s right,” Mary said sternly, “The bear always wins.”

“ _Rowr_ ," responded John, making bear-claw motions at her and a fierce little face.

She booped him on the nose with her bear and  nose-to-nose he booped the bear back. Mary laughed and kissed the tip of his nose while he grinned like a dope.

“That wasn’t the last time I fell into someone's flower bed shinnying down a wall,” she admitted, “I’m rather good at getting into trouble, though I wasn’t always quite so good at getting out of it. Then I met Rupe and we got into and out of trouble together.”

“I just bet you did. What a pair of troublemakers." John took a strand of her hair in his fingers and tucked it behind her ear. It immediately fell adrift again. "Though it turns out I like that in a person."

"You should always know what you like."

"True. And it's important to be true to yourself.”

“It is,” Mary agreed. She laid one hand along John's cheek. "After my father was killed, I swore that one day I'd _build_ myself a family, like I wanted to build other things. People who liked me for who I was and didn't want to make me _civilised_."

"I like you just as you are," he said, playing with her hair again, "I'm not especially civilised myself." He grimaced ruefully. "I suspect I'm... a bit not good."

“Don’t be absurd.”

“No,” he said, “I’m serious.” And he sounded it. “I’m wholly myself these days, in a way I never could be before I met Sherlock, but I think by most standards I’m built pretty wrong.” He looked at the strands of her dark hair running through his fingertips. “I love that you’re an engineer, you know. It’s very constructive. I always thought I wanted to mend broken things, myself. I tried it, as a doctor, as a soldier, then with Sherlock. I was only ever occasionally successful at it in the army. I was better at it as a doctor. I manage it most often with Sherlock. With music too, a bit. Really, you need to be warned. There's something wrong with me.”

He seemed to even mean it.

Mary slapped him on the chest, not playfully at all. “You can’t possibly believe that,” she said crossly, “And it’s nonsense. You can’t be built wrong. We’re all just built for different things.  You can't use stone to build a raft, you can't use straw to fireproof a tent. And I speak from bitter experience there."

John looked surprised as she warmed to her subject.

"What's more, you can't make a house to withstand earthquakes the same way you build bridges to withstand floods. You can’t even make walls and ceilings of the same stuff; not good ones. Everything has its role and its place to be, John. You are who you are, and you’ve finally found what you were built for, working with Sherlock, and you do it _splendidly_.”

Her eyes, glittering with righteous fervour, met his, that were shining now with a kind of giddy warmth. “You think so?” he asked, more than willing to be convinced.

“Anyone can take one look at you and Sherlock and _know_ so,” Mary asserted. She tilted her head to one side. “You two are a bit like Rupe and me. It needs the two of you to make the balance.”

John grinned at her, that delightful, boyish grin full of mischief and swagger that she had first seen and adored at the Chingford Plains fete, when he’d won her that giant teddy bear (the one in the living room) at the shooting gallery. This grin had the added charm of being suffused with adoration.

“I love it when you talk engineering,” he said.

“Wait until I get onto tensile strengths.”

“Mmm. Talk dirty to me, baby.” His hand was caressing her thigh, stroking up to her hip.

"Copper has a yield strength of 70 megapascals," she murmured in her most sultry voice, "Kevlar has one of 3620 megapascals."

John's hand described slow circles against her bum. "A human bone has a yield strength of around 104," he said, "Depending on the bone, of course."

"Ooooh, baby," she moaned lustily with an exaggerated wiggle, and then they began to giggle again.

"Do you know what I really want now?" Mary demanded, sitting up and resting her hand on John's stomach. The muscles under her fingers fluttered pleasingly. She tugged the sheets down so she could look at all of him, and he let her.

There was his wonderful face, of course, so expressive, world-weary at times, yet so capable of that gorgeous smile, like a little boy. Naughty too, sometimes, and god wasn't that just perfect? She'd never seen eyes so blue and frankly, she'd never been so attracted by a _nose_ before, though she was aware that part of that oddly erotic attraction arose from how he nudged her with it as they kissed and made love.

Then there was his neck, his throat (and she loved to hear him sing) and those broad shoulders. His arms were lovely, and his hands, so steady and confident, with their contrasting suppleness of a doctor's gentle skin with a guitarist's small calluses.

She loved the shape of his chest, the hair across it and down his stomach. She loved the little layer of softness over strong muscle. The angles of his hips, his well-shaped thighs, the thatch of curly blond hair. She hadn't had much opportunity to study his legs, though his calves were positively _biteable_. Mary just assumed she was going to adore his still covered feet as well.

And his cock looked just as nice at rest as hard, she decided. She trailed her fingers down over his navel, into the patch of tightly curled pubic hair, over the top of his soft prick. It responded by swelling only a little. John gave it and then Mary a faintly exasperated and slightly embarrassed look.

"Not quite yet, love."

Mary leaned over to kiss his mouth softly. "If there's one thing I'm sure of John," she said, "It's that you're worth waiting for."

His grin was half preening, half amazed. "And you. Not just for this. For everything."

"Good. Because I'll be coming and going with my job. As you've noticed."

"I have." He caught up her hand and kissed the palm. "You'll always be worth waiting for." He  caressed her fingers with his own, kissed them. "Now - what was that you wanted?"

"A sandwich," said Mary and leapt out of bed, narrowly avoiding the smack on the bum John aimed at her.

"Last one to the kitchen gets to be the plate!" And she was running. She heard John shout _Hey_! and fling himself out of bed on her heels.

John got to the kitchen right behind her and scooped her into his arms from behind, and proceeded to kiss her spine. She laughed and ground her bare bottom into his bare groin. His cock thickened more this time.

"I need to get to the fridge," she complained happily.

"Go ahead then," and fondled her breasts instead of letting her go.  Mary leaned back so that her breasts jutted out and gave him more to play with. He kissed her neck.

"I'm okay with being the plate, by the way," he said between hot, nuzzling tastes of her skin.

"I'm a messy eater," she warned, "And I love licking the plate after."

His cock, pressed against the cleft of her arse, thickened a little more.

Ten minutes later they were back in the bedroom with a tray of everything they could grab in a hurry that seemed vaguely suitable. Jam and honey. Yoghurt and hommous dip. A punnet of blueberries and a bottle of chocolate sauce. A tub of ice cream. A jar of olives and a pot of soft, marinated goat cheese.

"Quick wash up first," Mary insisted, chivvying him into the bathroom, and John, fully aware of his duties as a serving platter for this exercise, cheerfully stepped into the shower with her. Despite temptation, they kept it brisk and efficient. Though Mary did make a point of slowly washing his cleft for him again, while he leaned his forehead against the shower wall and made strangled little sounds of pleasure. By the time they returned to bed, it was clear his refractory period was well and truly over.

Because they were actually hungry, they began with the olives.  Mary hand fed them to him at first, and he to her, until the whole thing became suddenly and inexplicably funny.  She threw the next one at him and he simply snapped it out of the air with his teeth and gave her a smirk as he chewed and swallowed.

Goat’s cheese, marinated in oil and spices, she transferred from her mouth to his in a kiss.

Hommous he fed to her from his fingers, which she cleaned lavishly by licking and then fellating them until they were both panting in anticipation.

Ice cream, partly melted, was swirled over her breasts, the cold making her nipples peak, the heat of his mouth on her making them stiffer still. He caught the blueberries she lobbed to him, and she kissed him as a reward between each successful catch. He tasted of blueberries and salt and desire.

She poured on and then suckled off the rich chocolate sauce from his nipples, which rapidly became her favourite dessert in the whole world.

"I don't suppose you know the optimum temperature for melted chocolate on really sensitive skin?" Mary asked dreamily, still feeling the texture of his pebbled skin on her tongue, along with the silkiness of the sauce.

John, kissing chocolate smears from her lips, smiled. "As a matter of fact, I do."

She hadn't expected that. "Was it for a case?"

"Oh no." John grinned wickedly. "That was purely personal research, back in my uni days with a girl I knew from anatomy class."

Mary’s eyes sparkled. “I’d assume the optimum temperature would vary, depending on the body part to which is was applied.”

“And the current temperature of the body part in question. Yes.”

“Perhaps we could try that sometime.”

“An excellent idea,” he concurred, and he kissed the point of her jaw under her ear, nuzzled the spot, then nosed his sensuous way to the hollow of her throat.

"We haven't used the honey," Mary noted, reaching for the jar, "That goes deliciously runny at the right temperature." She glanced down at his cock, growing thicker and, yes, hotter.

John put his hands behind his head and leaned back, grinning, against the headboard to give her free access.

Mary took her time, tilting the jar to pour a thin line of honey over the head of his cock. She watched the honey trickle down the shaft while John laughed at how it tickled. When he was well decorated, she put the jar down and went happily to work, licking and lapping and sucking while John moaned and tried to keep still for her.

The honey moved faster than Mary did, and soon her tongue was swirling over his balls as well. He bent his knees and raised them to give her space, and suddenly her tongue was chasing a drip of honey further down. He gasped at the hot touch of her tongue against his perineum. Then he looked down at her looking up at him.

"I think you'll like this," she promised him, “Just say stop if you don't. And if you're game... you can help me find your prostate." She traced her fingertip up the length of his unflagging erection.

The look on his face was almost equal parts trepidation and anticipation, which morphed quite quickly into pure anticipation.  Sherlock might have recognised it as similar to the look John generally got in response to the words _it could be dangerous_.

"That honey is getting ticklish down there," was what he said, angling his hips and legs to grant her greater access. With a wicked grin, Mary went back to resolving that situation with tongue and lips.

John drew his knees up higher and at the first touch of her tongue on his hole, he made a truly undignified noise of want, and continued to make those noises at the incredible feeling of her licking him, curling her tongue to a point and pushing it into the pucker of sensitive skin. His attempts to say her name – pleading and exulting and begging – devolved into ‘Maaah…god.. Maaa…Mar…Maaaaaar…yyyyyy.”

And that was nothing compared to the way he writhed and panted and actually thrust his hips towards her when she rubbed her finger beside her tongue on the hole, and then, finger slick with spit, gently slipped that finger into him. She kissed his perineum and his balls as she moved her finger carefully, fucked him cautiously, making sure her short-trimmed and smooth nail didn’t scrape, that the pad of her finger pressed only delicately against the walls of him.

He was keening and inarticulate as she pushed into him to the knuckle and curled her finger. He bore down onto her, marvellously abandoned, so hard that Mary wondered if he could come like this alone, just from the idea and the act, but not yet, not quite yet.

“Can you feel me, baby?” she asked, and he opened his eyes enough to look at her, to laugh joyfully. He couldn’t form words though, and she crooked her finger again. “There? There, beautiful?”

“Ah… ah…” He moved a fraction, and she interpreted what he was trying to do and so shifted her finger in him a little, and suddenly his cries became louder and he spread his legs wider.

Mary licked his shaft, swirled her tongue around his foreskin, under it, kissed the tip of his glans, all the while brushing against that perfect spot inside him, and John couldn’t keep still, he could no longer even try, and she swallowed him down and sucked and licked, keeping pace with his bucking hips with her mouth and finger. She felt his cock thicken and she suckled harder, softly rubbed against his prostate again, and then he was shouting and coming and coming and coming.

She slipped her finger out of him before he had a chance to ask her to – she knew how oversensitive some men could find that – and rested her cheek on his thigh, her breath warm against his softening cock.

John looked stunned, and stunning, and his chest was heaving with the effort to breath. Then he grinned.

“You…”  he said, panting, “Are fucking amazing.”

Mary began to reply, but suddenly his hands were around her arms, around her body, pulling her up into a kiss she wasn’t sure he would want considering where her mouth had been, but maybe he figured since he’d been clean enough for her to stick her tongue into him there, she was clean enough for him to press his mouth to hers, to twine his tongue with hers, and the two of them tasted of honey and sweat and his come, and the kiss was more rather than less passionate on the taste of it.

Then John slipped his fingers into her cunt and Mary pushed against them. He lifted his fingers to his mouth, sucked them clean, kissed her again, then lowered her to the bed. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, and kissed and licked her throat and nipples, her navel and abdomen, and then he nudged his way between her legs and kissed her clit.

Mary spread her legs wide, and he helped her by pressing his palms to her thighs, up behind them to the backs of her knees, and held her up while his mouth found every wet, hot fold of her cunt. He licked her, lapping up her wetness. He made his tongue curled and hard and rubbed her clit with it. He kissed her cunt, open-mouthed, and sucked at her, and she writhed and panted and tried to say his name but only said, “Oh oh oh oh oh”.

He let go of her thighs and let them settle on his shoulders and he nuzzled into her, licking, sucking, tongue-fucking her, humming a vibration against every sensitive nerve. He even pressed the tip of his nose to her clit for a moment, rubbing it like an eskimo kiss before closing his whole mouth over it, rubbing it now with the flat of his tongue, with the tip of it, sucking softly then sliding his tongue inside her.

And Mary bucked against him, with his hands scooped around her bum to hold her cunt close to his moving mouth, and she grabbed his head then fisted her fingers in the sheets and thrust onto his tongue and.., oh, now his fingers; his fingers and mouth; his tongue, his fingers, his mouth, his nose bumping against her clit then pushed into her pubic hair, his hands returning to squeeze her arse and hold her wet and wriggling and wide, wide open to his mouth _oh god, oh god, oh dear fucking go….aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh._

John held her firmly as she thrashed and orgasmed so hard that, as she collapsed back on the bed, she thought it was entirely possible she’d passed out and was now hallucinating the way he still licked at her, softly but insistently, and she wriggled but splayed her legs and he obliged, sucking at her until she came a second time. He kissed her clit after that, licked tentatively again.

“No, no!” she cried, then giggled, then sagged gracelessly panting onto the mattress. “Dear god… John Watson… you’re a genius… your tongue… deserves awards…”

John crawled up to lay beside her and kiss her ear, his hand across her waist, his nose (damp) pushed against her cheek. She turned her head to kiss the tip of it, to taste herself there too, and they just grinned at each other, laughed.

With no strength left to climb back between the sheets, John managed simply to pull the bedspread and blankets around them and they snuggled together, sated and sticky and utterly spent, they fell asleep entwined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found Mary's bear, and so naturally I bought him. I have my own [Professor Challenger](http://221b-hound.livejournal.com/107150.html) now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are promises for the future - some involving kinks with kilts and uniforms - and one or two more small confessions and deductions. Start as you mean to continue, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end. Though I might well write that kilt/uniform story some day.

Three things were obvious when John and Mary slowly stirred to wakefulness, still wrapped up close together. The first was that it was late afternoon. The second was that John had another erection. The third was that the silence in the flat meant Nirupa wasn't back yet.

Without any sense of urgency, they mutually decided to deal with the delicious surprise of item two by playing with each other's nipples as Mary straddled him and rode him in a slow grind until they both came. Mary collapsed over him, face nestled in the crook of his neck while he stroked her hips and back.

A few minutes later, she sleepily observed, "Your clothes are still in the wash."

John made some indistinct comment about clothes being highly overrated while he kissed her hair. Mary laughed and said he could always wear some of hers and John indicated a willingness to try, as long as he didn't have to wear heels, because a recent case had proven he couldn't walk in them no matter how many lives were at stake.

After another doze, they had their third shower of the day. They cuddled under the spray, washing each other with sweetness rather than lust - they were all lusted out for the moment but there was sweetness aplenty yet to express - and Mary asked him to sing again.

"That Buddy Holly song," she said.  "When I heard you before, I thought you must be dancing in the shower as well."

So John wrapped his arms around her and rocked them both in a comfortable sway while he sang softly: _Every day, it's a-getting faster, everyone said go ahead and ask her. Love like yours will surely come my way._

Mary dressed in comfy track pants and an engineering T-shirt that John said she looked cute in and she went down to the communal laundry with her arms full of hopelessly food-and-sex messed bedding. She stuffed that into a washing machine, rescued John's clothes from another and bundled them into the drier. She checked her phone on the way back up. A couple of texts showed Rupe was enjoying herself immensely and was on her way to dinner with Sherlock to celebrate the successful conclusion of the case.

"Rupe's having dinner with Sherlock at Angelo's," she reported on her return, "Has he texted you?"

"No idea," John called back from the bedroom, "My phone's somewhere in the Thames. Third phone this year.” He sounded annoyed at that. “At least I still have my wallet."

He had finally retrieved the latter from the bathroom and its surviving contents had been laid out on the kitchen bench to dry. (Many replacement documents had been laminated after the second time John had lost them to incidents of this type, back in the first year he’d known Sherlock. John had a practical approach to the probabilities of his life, Mary had learned.)

Mary stepped into the bedroom to see that John had found a T-shirt but was standing, bare-bottomed, at her wardrobe, trying to find something to wear on his lower half. He had jeans in one hand, a pair of cargo pants in the other, and was considering which would fit best. Mary squeezed his bum (and he just chuckled at her being so handsy) as she leaned past him to fetch something completely different out of the cupboard.

John stared at it.

“That’s a kilt.”

“Yes,” she said, “A proper Scottish one.”

“Why do you own a kilt?”

“Oh, some party I went to years ago, where you had to go as a cultural cliché. Rupe went as a Bollywood dancer, and I went as a Scottish engineer. You know. Because they say all the best engineers are Scots.”

John hung the jeans and cargo pants back up and examined the kilt. “My mum was Scottish.”

“Which makes you sort of Scottish too, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. A bit, maybe.” He looked at her. “This? Now?”

“Not necessarily now. But maybe next time. Maybe…” She ran her fingers over the T-shirt he wore, which said _I can EXPLAIN it to you but I can’t UNDERSTAND it for you_ , then past the hem to his thatch of pubic hair, stopping short of fondling his cock again, though she wanted to. “Maybe next time you could wear it and leave it on while we…”

John kissed her before she could finish speaking. He didn’t get hard again – probably not physically possible after the glorious day they’d had – but he kissed her nose afterwards and nodded decisively at the kilt. “Let’s just see if it fits then. For next time.” His grin was wicked indeed.

 _I have got it bad_ , Mary thought, watching him put the kilt on _, I thought he was sexy stinking of river slime, and here he is in a fucking kilt and I want to eat him up with a spoon.  I absolutely cannot keep my hands off him. God. I’m so done for._

John stood, feet braced apart, and looked at the result in her mirror. “Not bad, I suppose.”

“You’ll do me nicely,” Mary murmured, bending slightly to stroke his calf, then running her hand up his thigh under the kilt to squeeze his bum again.

He just grinned at her via their reflection. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, “I’ll wear this next time, if you’ll wear my old uniform.”

Mary had no idea why the thought of her in his uniform was so appealing, to him or to her, but she agreed instantly. And instantly wished they were at his place already, so they could try it.

_So. Done. For._

“This is kind of breezy,” John observed as they held hands and made for the kitchen.

“I don’t have any pants for you,” said Mary, “Well… unless…”

“Nah. Breezy is fine,” John laughed.

They both went a bit speculatively quiet at that point, and it was some time in the future before the topic came up again. All that happened right then was that they made cheese and tomato toasted sandwiches and mugs of tea, then settled on the living room sofa to eat, to cuddle and watch the 1960 film of _The Lost World,_ one of Mary's favourites.

*

Nirupa stepped into the flat first, and stopped, caught between thinking how adorable John and Mary were, and how she probably should have pressed the buzzer to give them warning.

John was stretched out asleep on the sofa, head pillowed on Lord Roxton, the giant bear he’d won for Mary at the Chingford fete. Lord Roxton wore one of Mary’s engineering T-shirts – _Civil Engineers Have the Best Contours_. John wore one too, and a kilt, which had rucked up a little to show off his knees.

Mary was snugged along John’s front, the little spoon, also sleeping, in a pair of faded track pants and the T-shirt which bore a Venn diagram of _Sexy, Funny, Smart._ The conjunction of those three points was labelled ‘Engineers’.

Behind Nirupa, Sherlock was busy silently deducing a billion things about the pair on the sofa which, frankly, you didn’t really need to be a consulting detective to deduce at all.

John’s eyes flew open and he looked to be reaching for something to throw before he registered who was in the room with them. Nirupa watched him consider and discard a number of responses, the expressions flowing across his face like a stream, before he clearly settled on an odd combination of _content_ and _resigned_ , and settled back down, tucking his face against the back of Mary’s neck.

“Wake up, love, we’ve got company.”

Mary opened her eyes a crack, took one look at Nirupa and grinned like the bear with all the honey. “Have fun on the case?”

“It was a serious matter,” said Nirupa sternly, “Not fun.”

“You’re fooling exactly no-one, Rupe. Is she, John? _You_ think cases with Sherlock are fun.”

John kissed her shoulder and began to sit up, bringing her up with him. “I think cases with Sherlock are _insane_.”

“You think they’re fun,” insisted Sherlock.

John admitted defeat. “Yes. I do. Though I’m not sorry to have missed today’s. He didn’t get you thrown into a river or a pit or kidnapped or impersonating an antiques dealer, did he Rupe?”

“No,” Nirupa said, somewhat regretfully.

“Never mind. I’m sure your chance will come.”

Nirupa brightened at the prospect, and Sherlock looked faintly alarmed and then as though the notion had possibilities.

“You’ll note,” said Mary, “Not a lovely hair is out of place on either of them.”

She and John dissolved into giggles that neither Sherlock nor Nirupa understood.

“Tea?” offered Nirupa.

“I’ll help,” said John. He dropped a kiss onto Mary’s forehead, then followed Nirupa to the kitchen.

“Did you have fun?” he asked her.

“Immense fun,” she admitted with a laugh, “Sherlock is even less predictable than Mary sometimes.”

“Mary certainly is full of surprises,” John concurred, with the kind of smile that had Rupe swearing to never ask questions. Mary would probably give her much more detail than necessary anyway.

In the living room, Mary ran her fingers through her hair and smiled as Sherlock took a seat. “Feel better?” she asked.

“About what?”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”

Sherlock sighed. “If you want to know if I… trust you with him, then yes. I do. Though if I find that trust misplaced…”

“Yeah, I know. You’ll make me sorry. That’s the import of the ‘if you hurt my friend’ talk. You managed it pretty succinctly with those two texts.”

Sherlock looked alarmed again at that.

“I deleted them,” she said, “He doesn’t know you sent them. I won’t tell him.”

Sherlock feigned indifference. “Tell him or not. As you wish.”

“I think I love him,” she said.

Sherlock looked at her sharply. “You _think_.” His tone was impatient.

“All right. Yes. I love him. It’s too soon to say so yet, though.”

“Why is it too soon?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe I just want to feel it for a bit longer before I say it. Maybe I want to be sure he feels the same way before I do. It can get a bit odd if you’re not at the same place at the same time with someone. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardise this.”

“But he lov…”

“Don’t.” Mary grimaced, then her expression softened. “I think when I hear that, I want to hear it from him first. Even if you already know all the signs.”

Sherlock nodded. “All right.”

Further discussion was put off when Nirupa and John returned with the tea and biscuits.

Mary started the film from the top again, and was forced to throw biscuits at Sherlock to make him desist with the scathing commentary. Sherlock pinched Lord Roxton to use as a teddy bear shield and refused to stop. John got him instead with a series of well-aimed lobs and side attacks. Sherlock tried to enlist Nirupa’s support in the field of scientific argument and was treated to a laughing lecture about cultural context and narrative subtext. Sherlock immediately began to ask penetrating questions, interspersed with well-aimed return volleys at John. He and Nirupa both complained loudly yet indulgently when Mary was exaggeratedly solicitous over the biscuit crumb John made a great fuss about getting in his eye.

It was very much a case, it seemed, of start as you mean to continue.

And for the rest of their days, they did.

**Author's Note:**

> In some of his roles, MF has this gorgeous, nuzzly way of kissing that makes me fizz to the end of my toes. :/
> 
> For those who have asked for proof of MF's superior (onscreen) snoggage skills, I present to you ["Three Continents Watson" ](http://youtu.be/XoJvbK7usEA) on YouTube by user Watsonsdick. The technique I drew on for this story appears at about 3.05, when Tim Canterbury kisses his office girlfriend (not Dawn).


End file.
